Aaron Klein - Striking Back

Shavit was impassive. “Point taken,” he said coolly, running his hand through his thinning, slicked-back hair, and then sipping from an espresso he’d been served earlier. Shavit knew there was no chance the French would find anything that would tie Israel to the assassination. The mission had gone without a hitch. Without a flicker of emotion he bid his colleague farewell, and left the office of the chief commander of the DST.

The Israeli action could not go unpunished; it was a sharp embarrassment, a stinging slap in the face to the French government. The Mossad is convinced that the French responded by deliberately leaking the name of a high-ranking Palestinian source in Arafat’s Tunis office. The agent, Adnan Yassin, had been working for the Mossad for years, informing them of all that transpired in the office and among the Diaspora Palestinian leadership. In October 1993, Yassin was arrested, and never heard from again. In addition, the French alerted the Palestinians to the presence of Mossad listening devices that had been placed in antique French furniture the PLO had received as a gift from Yassin. The French retribution handicapped Israel during the sensitive negotiations leading up to the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Three different, but often intertwined, factors come into play when a state decides to carry out an assassination—prevention, deterrence, and revenge. The role of prevention is clear—killing a known terrorist can prevent the next attack, most demonstrably in the case of an imminent “ticking bomb.” And in certain instances, the well-timed assassination of a terrorist leader can seriously wound an organization, hindering its ability to function indefinitely.

Deterrence is a more complex factor. Essentially, its goal is to violently persuade those considering a career in terrorism to choose a different vocation. Undoubtedly some do. “We’ll never know how many,” a former high-ranking Mossad officer told me, smiling contentedly. True, but the ultimate effectiveness of deterrence-by-assassination is open to question.

Deterrence is often woven together with the third factor, revenge and punishment. The aim here is to make it clear that he who hurts us, as an organization, as a people, will forever walk around in fear of a sudden, unprepared-for death. But there is an added tactical value: terrorists who are constantly looking over their shoulder in fear for their lives are less preoccupied with executing terror.

Decision makers and heads of intelligence services the world over will vehemently deny succumbing to revenge’s ancient allure, with its biblical demand for an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Yet revenge, to differing degrees, has played a role in each and every assassination carried out in Israel’s name, throughout its history. The same can be said for democracies like Britain, France, and the United States. Usually, “revenge” is not spoken of openly. Different, softer words are used, words that people can live with; phrases like “closing the circle.”

Revenge and punishment are part of a government’s decision-making process. For instance, the ongoing hunt for Osama Bin Laden. To what degree is the search for the 9/11 mastermind based on the need for prevention or deterrence? Now that numerous Bin Laden clones have arisen, to what extent is the hunt driven by a desire for revenge and punishment?

In the case of Atef Bseiso, revenge was served cold, twenty years after the crime. Bseiso joined a list of more than a dozen people killed by Israel in the wake of the Munich attack. Bseiso, the last of them, closed the circle.

ISRAEL, LOD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

MAY 9, 1972, 1610H

Terrorism hit an awful peak in 1972. Palestinian groups, frustrated by their failure to execute attacks against Israel from the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, exported their activities beyond the boundaries of the Middle East. Throughout 1972, a record number of high-profile attacks were carried out against Israelis and Jews. The Palestinians’ daring offensive incorporated many forms of violence. They hijacked planes, assassinated Israeli diplomats, and sent letter bombs all across the European continent. As a result of their actions, the plight of the Palestinian people began to seep into the world’s collective consciousness. Terrorism—their chosen method—was proving successful. Each deadly attack raised the ante. Operations grew bolder, more sophisticated, more theatrical.

On May 8, 1972, Belgian Sabena Flight 571 was en route from Brussels, via Vienna, to Tel Aviv. On board were ten crew members and ninety passengers, sixty-seven of them Jewish. Also on board were four members of Black September, an amorphous branch of Fatah. The terrorists (two men and two women) were armed with hand grenades, a revolver, and two five-pound explosive devices. In the late afternoon, as the plane flew over the Greek island of Rhodes, the commander of the terrorist cell quietly made his way to the pilot’s wide-open cabin door. He pulled out a loaded gun and ordered the pilot to land the plane in Tel Aviv—a wildly daring move, considering that Israel’s premier counterterrorist unit, Sayeret Matkal, was five miles from Israel’s international airport. The terrorist grabbed the PA system and introduced himself: “This is Captain Kamal Rifa’at, your new captain….”

In a quick phone consultation, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the hero of the 1967 Six Day War, and Golda Meir, prime minister, decided to allow the aircraft to land at Lod International Airport. It touched down and was immediately escorted to the far end of the tarmac. Within hours, top military brass convened at the airport terminal. Defense Minister Dayan and Transportation Minister Shimon Peres were joined by Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff Lieutenant General David Elazar and several other IDF generals, including the head of Military Intelligence, Major General Aharon Yariv, and Major General Ariel Sharon (who later served as defense minister and, from 2001, as prime minister). Dayan directed Victor Cohen, head of the interrogation branch of the Shabak, Israel’s internal secret service, to conduct spurious negotiations with the terrorists. Dayan and Meir had no intention of yielding to their extortionate demands—to free 315 convicted Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israeli jails—Dayan just wanted to deprive the terrorists of sleep.

Next, Dayan summoned Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite anti-terror unit, commanded by Ehud Barak. (In twenty-seven years Barak too would become prime minister.) Dayan instructed the unit to cripple the plane and rescue the hostages. Shortly thereafter, Barak and his officers began to practice storming an identical Boeing 707 on a nearby runway on the far side of the airport, while mechanics were rendering the hijacked plane unable to fly.

Victor Cohen’s negotiations, conducted over the plane’s radio system, kept the hijackers up all night, as they reiterated their demand that Israel open the gates of its prisons. On May 9, at 0900 hours, after more than ten hours of continuous negotiations, Cohen succeeded in convincing Rifa’at to send the pilot out with a sample of their explosives, to show to the Israelis. Cohen was playing the good cop as he argued that he needed to convince the one-eyed defense minister Dayan—that feared warrior—how lethal Black September’s intentions in fact were. Pilot Reginald Levy, traveling to Israel to celebrate his fiftieth birthday together with his wife, provided Israel’s security forces with critical details: the number of hijackers, their physical appearance, the contours of the black packages—probably explosive devices—they clutched. He confirmed that there were no seats next to the emergency exits of the plane, a matter of supreme importance to Barak and his staff officers, who knew that success hinged on surprise and speed. Levy returned to the hijackers and reported that Dayan had agreed to their terms. The 315 Palestinian prisoners would be delivered to the airport, and from there sent on to Cairo. Flight 571 would meet them in the Egyptian capital and the hostages would be freed. First, a technical team of mechanics would repair the aircraft.